Colleen and Nikki continue their discussion through the book of Hebrews. They talk about the really good news that when you trust Jesus, all your sins, past, present, and future are paid for in full. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: Today we are going to start talking through the amazing chapter of Hebrews 10. And you know what I just realized? I call this “amazing” every time we start a new chapter. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] Well, it’s all amazing.
Colleen: Before we get into it, though, I want to remind everybody that if you want to make comments, ask us questions, or just check in with us, email us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can go to proclamationmagazine.com, and you can subscribe to our weekly email. You can subscribe to Proclamation! magazine. Do follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and wherever you listen to your podcasts, write a review and like our podcast. As we start Hebrews 10, I just can’t help remembering that there are so many things about the way I thought of Jesus as an Adventist that this chapter just undoes, and I’d like to ask you, Nikki, what were your thoughts as you were reading through this chapter? What about Jesus changed for you as you looked at this chapter from what you believed as an Adventist?
Nikki: The best way I think to answer that is to say that Jesus, according to Hebrews, is a completely different person, and He, from chapter 1 all the way to now, is a completely different person. And so now when I look at Hebrews, I reflect on who I thought He was as an Adventist, but it’s just not the same guy, and He didn’t come to do the same thing, and He did not accomplish the same thing. His purpose was different, His method was different. I don’t know, I end up feeling pretty frustrated that for so long, for so long I deified someone else.
Colleen: I feel the same way. I find myself feeling angry and almost desperate that people understand that the Jesus they’re taught as an Adventist is a fiction. He’s a false Jesus. He’s not the Jesus of Scripture. He’s not our Savior. The Jesus of Scripture, the Jesus of Hebrews, is incredible. He is eternal, almighty God. He could never have sinned, He couldn’t have failed, and we are completely secure in Him. I did not understand that Jesus as an Adventist, even though I used almost all the same words.
Nikki: As you’re talking about this, I’m thinking too about all of the same worship music that we sang and the message behind that that was so different from the Adventist message, and the fact that I could sing those things and believe I was singing to the Jesus as I understood Him, I don’t even know how to put words to how confusing that is, to hold different views about Him and to sing, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,” but now I don’t actually know if He’s mine.
Colleen: Or if I have blessed assurance!
Nikki: Well, I knew I didn’t.
Colleen: Why don’t we do this, Nikki, we’re not going to go through the whole chapter of Hebrews 10 today, it’s much too long and there’s much too much to unpack from our past. But we’re going to go through the first 18 verses. And to start, why don’t we read together verses 1 to 10, and then we’ll go back, and like we’ve been doing, we’ll walk through it verse by verse, just so we’re sure we understand what this author is saying, because as I’ve done this, I have just been overwhelmed with the reality of what Jesus actually has done and how different that is from what I used to think about Him. Do you mind reading 1 to 10?
Nikki: “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.”‘ When He said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then He added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Colleen: On the surface, it doesn’t look like there’s anything so particularly new here, but when we look closely at it, what this passage is saying is pretty overwhelming. And let’s just start with verse 1. Is there anything about verse 1, Nikki, that strikes you or that is a little jarring when you think back to your Adventist worldview?
Nikki: Well, you know, I never understood what the Bible meant by something being a shadow. I don’t even know if I remember reading the word “shadow” in the Bible. It just was never talked about. Which as a Christian now, and imagining Christians who don’t have an Adventist background listening to this, you might wonder, “How on earth do you grow up believing you’re a Christian and you’ve never heard about anything in the Old Testament being a shadow?” But I hadn’t, and the idea that the law would be a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true formof these realities, when the law was eternal, and it was everything, and it marked the Most Holy Place, it was absolutely everything to us, and that was a shadow of something else?
Colleen: Well said. That’s the thing that hits me about this verse too. And it’s interesting that it so specifically says “the law.” For those of us who came from an Adventist background, this is kind of a necessary statement. For those who might not have an Adventist background, it might be a little confusing. But when Adventists say “law,” they always mean one thing, or almost always. What do they mean?
Nikki: The Decalogue.
Colleen: That’s what we think when we see the word “law” in the Bible. That’s what we think when we see the word “commandments” in the Bible.
Nikki: Particularly with that halo around the fourth commandment. That is everything in Adventism.
Colleen: Ellen White said, in one of her first visions, that she was taken to heaven, saw the lovely Jesus, and she saw the law in heaven with a golden halo around the fourth commandment. That’s how we grew up, that’s what we believed, that’s what we thought marked those who were going to be saved was that they would honor the seventh-day Sabbath. So the law had to be eternal for us. So when we see that the law is only a shadow, that’s not just the sacrifices, that’s not just don’t wear linen and wool and don’t cook a kid in his mother’s milk. That includes the Decalogue. It includes the entire law, including the Levitical priesthood. Everything about the law was a shadow of the good things to come, and it resonates with me because it echoes the word used in Colossians 2:16 and 17, where Paul says, the feasts, the new moons, and the sabbaths are shadows of the reality which is found in Christ. So this concept of shadow is not in only one place and not only one author.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The law is a shadow. And it very specifically camps again on the idea of the sacrifices. Now, I have to say, as an Adventist, that didn’t mean much to me because I believed that those sacrifices were done away with, but now I look at this, and I think, we have to look at this business of the sacrifice a little more closely because even though as Adventists we were taught that the Old Testament animal sacrifices were done away with, we were not taught about Jesus’ sacrifice the way the Bible teaches about Jesus’ sacrifice. It’s a subtle thing, but it’s pretty profound. And when we look at verse 1, it just leads the way right into a discussion of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice. What does it say in verse 1, Nikki, about those Old Testament sacrifices?
Nikki: Well, it says that it can never make you perfect.
Colleen: And then it goes on, in verse 2, to ask kind of a rhetorical question, but it says, “Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins” What is the author saying here about those Old Testament sacrifices, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, he was saying that if they had completely absolved these people of their sins and forgiven them for all time, there would have been no further need for them.
Colleen: They would have not had to be offered every year. Now, when it talks about the sacrifices offered year-by-year, this phrase is specifically referring to what particular day in the Jewish year?
Nikki: That’s the Day of Atonement.
Colleen: That was the day when the high priest offered the Day of Atonement sacrifices for the Nation of Israel. Every day of the year, individuals would be bringing sin offerings, thank offerings, burnt offerings, and so forth to the temple for their committed sins, but every year there had to be an atoning sacrifice offered because there were all kinds of unremembered, unconfessed, unintentional sins that were not being atoned for by offerings the people could offer because they didn’t even remember those sins. So this is talking about the big picture. Every year those high priests would offer a sacrifice to atone for the nation, to make the nation reconciled to God, but it couldn’t perfectly work. It could never clear their consciences. They always still had a consciousness of being sinners because they went right out and sinned and had to bring another sin offering. I have to say, as an Adventist I understood the words that was saying, but as an Adventist I really did not feel like I had a cleansed conscience. What about you, Nikki? Did that make sense to you as an Adventist?
Nikki: No. And the thing that has been so exciting for me to see through our walk in Hebrews is that the Day of Atonement, like you mentioned, dealt with unremembered sins, so even if they didn’t remember their sins, the fact that God commanded them to have these sacrifices every year on the Day of Atonement was a reminder –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – of their sins. It was a reminder of their condition. Under the New Covenant, we are not constantly reminded of our condition as depraved people. We are constantly reminded, as Christians, of our position in Christ.
Colleen: And it’s interesting, Nikki, because verse 3 actually confirms what you just said. Do you want to read verse 3?
Nikki: “But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.”
Colleen: God’s law for Israel that those sacrifices be offered every year was partly so that they would remember that He’d provided a way of atonement, and it was partly a reminder that they needed atonement, they were not clean.
Nikki: And this after spending a whole year atoning for every sin they could remember. So they had done their best –
Colleen: Yes. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – and then God did the rest. [Laughter.] Sorry.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Actually, that’s a really good point! Did you learn that as an Adventist?
Nikki: No, I actually didn’t think that they were forgiven for sins they couldn’t remember, because we weren’t, and we were in the better –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – you know, the better covenant, whatever that meant.
Colleen: Right, whatever that meant. And I did learn that if I did my best, Jesus would do the rest.
Nikki: Oh, that – yes, I did have that idea of Him in Adventism. Yeah.
Colleen: It’s almost like a failsafe, like, well, I’ll do my best. Oops, forgot that one. Oops! Sinned there! Oh, well, Jesus will make up for it someday because He knows I’m sincere.
Nikki: That doesn’t even make sense with the Investigative Judgment because if you don’t remember every one of those sins and repent for them, then He doesn’t cover it. So it was almost like a cocktail of watered down Christian clichés and a really bad false doctrine.
Colleen: It’s true. We were not taught anything that had hope. It was a confusion. It was a mishmash of false beliefs that were crafted together and woven to try to look pretty, to make us feel better. Because, quite frankly, no Adventist I know had a clean conscience. There was always that subconscious, underlying sense of being sinful, of not quite being sure, of not quite having attained whatever it was we were looking for. I didn’t know any Adventists who felt perfectly content and safe in the Lord.
Nikki: Well, and I remember when I left Adventism, someone dear to me said, “How can you be so arrogant to believe that you’re saved?” So it was a point of arrogance inside Adventism because salvation presupposed some solid righteous living on the part of the person who claimed to have it.
Colleen: For an Adventist, that’s what salvation meant, you’re righteous. For a Christian, it means we’re trusting Jesus, who did everything necessary to forgive us. So in verse 4, he reiterates again the issue of those yearly and – well, I’ll say daily as well, but he’s referring here to the yearly sacrifices, and what does he say?
Nikki: He says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
Colleen: And then the author comes to an argument that is so profound for me. This was overwhelming as I studied it this week. It’s not a new idea, but I saw new things in this that I had never noticed before that completely chop away the Adventist view of Jesus. He goes to Psalm 40, and he quotes from Psalm 40. Nikki, would you read verses 4 through 7, please.
Nikki: “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.”‘”
Colleen: In verse 5, where he has the first quote from Psalm 40, who’s the author referring to when he says, “Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says”?
Nikki: Well, my ESV version says, “When Christ came into the world,” so he’s referring to the Messiah.
Colleen: “When Christ came into the world, He said,” and then he quotes out of Psalm 40, “Sacrifice and offering you have not desired.” Who’s the “you”?
Nikki: God.
Colleen: God the Father has not desired. “But a body you have prepared for me.” So what is the Christ saying here? This is saying this is what Jesus acknowledged as He became incarnate. God the Son comes into the world, becomes incarnate, and acknowledges what to the Father?
Nikki: That He had no desire for sacrifices and offerings.
Colleen: And because He didn’t, He gave the Son a body. What is that body going to be for?
Nikki: For sacrifice.
Colleen: The author of Hebrews is showing us how this psalm is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus and how Jesus understood, and he’s showing us that Jesus understood, when He came into the world and became incarnate and took a human body, that He is acknowledging to God, His Father, you didn’t ever want – and by “wanting,” He doesn’t mean He didn’t command them to offer sacrifices in Israel. It just means that the animals could never do the job. They were shadows. He’s already established that in the first verse of this chapter. But He’s saying, those animals never did it. “You gave me a body. That was your purpose all along. And I have come into the world, and you have given me a body because the animals didn’t do it.” And then he repeats the idea in verse 6. What does He say again?
Nikki: “In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.”
Colleen: He’s repeating that idea. And then He says in verse 7 what?
Nikki: “Behold I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.”
Colleen: So here we have the author of Hebrews applying Psalm 40 to Jesus, Jesus acknowledging that He was foretold in the prophets and in the Psalms and in the law, as Jesus Himself said on the road to Emmaus, and as Romans 3:21 says. But Jesus is acknowledging that He was foretold, and He says here, “Behold I have come to do your will.” And isn’t that an interesting thing? What kind of an attitude does a person have to have to say, “I have come to do your will”? He’s not saying specifically what He came to do. What was His purpose in coming?
Nikki: His purpose was to come and be a propitiation for the sins of man and reconcile us to God.
Colleen: And we learn from this sentence that that purpose was whose will?
Nikki: That was God’s will.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting? It’s not just Jesus saying, “Okay, I think I’ll go down and do this so I can rescue these people from sin.” He’s saying, “I came to do your will.” Now, this might seem like an odd place to camp, but we have to, because the Adventist Jesus isn’t the Jesus that came fully submitted to the Father going, “I’ve come to do your will.” And how do we know it’s not? What did Ellen White say? You did some research on this, Nikki, and I’d like you to share with us what you found.
Nikki: I found this in Early Writings. I think it’s in other places too, but I went on the Internet and did some searching because I grew up hearing that Jesus had to plead with the Father to come and save us. So I have some quotes here. Again, this is from Early Writings under the section “The Plan of Salvation.” So this takes place, according to Ellen White, after the fall of man in the garden, and it says: “Sorrow filled heaven as it was realized that man was lost and that world which God had created was to be filled with mortals doomed to misery, sickness, and death, and there was no way of escape for the offender. The whole family of Adam must die. I saw the lovely Jesus and beheld an expression of sympathy and sorrow upon His countenance. Soon I saw Him approach the exceeding bright light which enshrouded the Father. Said my accompanying angel, ‘He is in close conversation with His Father.’ The anxiety of the angels seemed to be intense while Jesus was communing with His Father. Three times He was shut in by the glorious light about the Father, and the third time He came from the Father His person could be seen. His countenance was calm, free from all perplexity and doubt, and shone with benevolence and loveliness such as words cannot express. He then made known to the angelic host that a way of escape had been made for lost man. He told them He had been pleading with His Father and had offered to give His life a ransom, to take the sentence of death upon Himself that through Him man might find pardon, that through the merits of His blood and obedience to the law of God they could have the favor of God and be brought into the beautiful garden and eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life.” She goes on to describe the despair that the angels felt.
Colleen: All this invented stuff.
Nikki: Yes. And you know, a lot of people really cherish this writing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: They feel like they have kind of gnostic information.
Colleen: Yes, they do.
Nikki: This is what she says Jesus told the angels because they were pretty upset about this news. He said – “Jesus also told them that they would have a part to act” – the angels would have a part to act – “to be with Him at different times to strengthen Him, that He would take man’s fallen nature, and His strength would not be even equal with theirs, that they would be witnesses of His humiliation and great sufferings and that as they would witness His sufferings and the hatred of men toward Him, they would be stirred with the deepest emotion and through their love for Him would wish to rescue and deliver Him from His murderers, but that they must not interfere to prevent anything they should behold and that they should act a part in His resurrection” –
Colleen: Oh, my.
Nikki: – “that the plan of salvation was devised, and His Father had accepted the plan.”
Colleen: Oh my goodness. That is the opposite of what we’re reading in Hebrews, the opposite.
Nikki: And she says that the angel told her, “Think ye that the Father yielded up His dearly beloved Son without a struggle? No, no. It was even a struggle with the God of heaven whether to let guilty man perish or to give His beloved Son to die for him.”
Colleen: Oh! It makes me so angry, Nikki, to hear that. That is not the story we read in Scripture.
Nikki: No. The Lamb was slain before the foundations of the earth. This was God’s plan. This was for His glory. This was not Plan B or C or D. This was purposed before we were ever created.
Colleen: That’s right. And even the most well-known Bible verse perhaps anywhere, John 3:16, puts the lie to what Ellen White said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” My goodness. God the Father did not have to be convinced to let Jesus come. Jesus didn’t come up with a plan to save poor mankind, and God wasn’t like struggling to figure out whether He wanted to save us!
Nikki: No. And Jesus did not take a fallen nature that was weak, and the angels did not resurrect Him, and yes, while humanity did kill the author of life, as Peter put it – was that Peter?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Even so, Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down.”
Colleen: Jesus laid His life down. And the Bible says that Jesus came to life by the life that was in Him. It also says that the Spirit brought Him to life, and it also says the Father brought Him to life, but Ellen said that Gabriel came into the tomb and said to Jesus that He needed to rise up because the Father called Him. No! Jesus is God! No angel helped resurrect Him. I am so offended by what I had been taught as an Adventist, and even if it wasn’t overt, even if I didn’t read all those words as an Adventist, that concept was implicit in everything I learned about Jesus and about the “Plan of Salvation,” and I’ve gotten so that I don’t even like that phrase, “The Plan of Salvation,” because it refers to a package of heresy that Adventists promote, and they call it “The Plan of Salvation.” It’s not what God did. It’s what Adventists and Ellen White say He did, and it’s perverted. It’s blasphemous. This text, “Then I said, ‘Behold I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written about me in the book.'” That phrase says that Jesus came submitted to the Father. He did not come doing His own will, with the Father grudgingly agreeing. He came to do the Father’s will. And you cannot come submitted to doing God’s will if you come with a fallen nature, as Ellen White said He did. Jesus came spiritually alive, never disconnected from the Father. He was God, and as the Son of Man, He was a spiritually alive human. He never was separated from God or from God’s will, and He could not come to do God’s will if He hadn’t been spiritually alive. He had no sin. He was not depraved as we are. No natural human could come submitted to do God’s will. Nikki, would you read 8 and 9 again, just so we can sort of tie up this idea.
Nikki: “When He said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then He added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second.”
Colleen: This is an amazing passage. What does the author say took away the first in order to establish the second? The words he uses are very interesting. He doesn’t say Jesus’ death on the cross took away the first in order to establish the second, he says something else. What does he say took away the first in order to establish the second?
Nikki: Doing God’s will.
Colleen: Yes. It was the fact that Jesus came fully submitted to the Father. You know, this was the thing that just overwhelmed me when I was studying this week. I knew He came fully submitted to the Father, doing the Father’s will. But what I hadn’t fully understood was that even still, it wasn’t the literal actions of Jesus that made the difference, because actions that come from an unsubmitted heart are meaningless. People can be not born again and specifically set out to do good deeds that are listed in the Bible. Those deeds are worthless. They mean nothing. Jesus didn’t come to earth as a man so that He could demonstrate keeping the law, so that He could demonstrate dying for sin or for sinners. He came to do the Father’s will, and all of those actions were the fruit of His submitted heart. It was His submitted heart that made the difference. It was His sinless, perfect, never-needed-to-be-born-again, no-sin-in-Him perfect nature that made the difference. He came to do the Father’s will because He qualified, the only human ever born on this earth who qualified to take the sin of mankind. He came because He was God the Son and infinite and thus was qualified to carry the sin of all His creatures, but He came as the Son of Man, without ever being spiritually dead, never having sin in Him, and thus He qualified to be the perfect sacrifice. It was His perfection that qualified Him, not the actions. The actions were the fruit of His perfection. So then, in verse 10, he ties it up in terms of what it means for us. What does he say in verse 10?
Nikki: He says, “And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Colleen: It’s really interesting that the author of Hebrews is making such a point here about the first, or the old, covenant being taken away by the submission and the offering of Christ once for all. In our local FAF group, we have a favorite commentator. We have a couple of commentaries by Steven Gere, who is Jewish, but he is a believer, and he’s written a couple of really fun – he’s quite a fun writer – but insightful commentaries, one on the Book of Acts that we’ve used and one on Hebrews, and he has a little passage in his commentary on Hebrews where he talks about verse 9 here. And I just want to read a little bit of what he wrote because it’s quite powerful. Steven Gere says, “When the author of Hebrews says, ‘He takes away the first in order to establish the second,’ this is not the first instance of the author affirming the replacement of the Old Covenant with the New. He has just done that in the whole of chapter 8; however,” Steven Gere says, “the reader must appreciate that this explosive comment represents the author’s launch of a theological grenade. The Greek word behind the phrase translated, ‘He takes away,’ is the present, active, indicative form of “anaireo,” which means to destroy, to kill, to slay, to put to death, to do away with. This word is used only this once in Hebrews and is the equivalent of the author’s having gone nuclear. In the words of Paul Ellingworth, ‘It is the strongest negative statement the author has made or will make about the Old Testament cultus.'” So when the author of Hebrews says, “He has taken away the first to establish the second,” he is saying in the most powerful possible way Jesus, through His submitted will and His once-for-all sacrifice, completely took away the Old Covenant as applying to believers, and He established the New Covenant. It’s once and done, and we can’t go back.
Nikki: It’s incredible. He just obliterated it.
Colleen: He did. He did. [Laughter.]
Nikki: That’s amazing. [Laughter.]
Colleen: And I did not see that as an Adventist in this passage. It just wasn’t even visible to me. It seemed confusing. Why don’t you read verses 11 to 18 now, and then we’ll go back and walk through the last part of this passage.
Nikki: “And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet. For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,’ then He adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.”
Colleen: When we look at 11, “every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices,” and then 12, “but He, having offered one sacrifice for the sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God,” could you just walk us through that much, Nikki, and tell us what the author is reminding us of? This isn’t new, he has said this before, but what point is he making?
Nikki: Well, he’s talking about the fact that the priests are always – they’re always working. They’re always on their feet, moving around, offering sacrifices, one after the other, and this is telling us that Christ offered a single sacrifice that was effectual and sufficient for all time, and so He sat down at the right hand of God. He didn’t have ongoing work.
Colleen: And then, you were talking to me a bit before we did the podcast about what struck you about the next verse.
Nikki: Yes, “waiting from this time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet.” That’s a part of 12. He sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet. It’s that “from” and “until.” It’s that phrasing that Adventist doctrine time and again likes to ignore.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Not just here, all over the place. So Ellen White has the vision that Jesus goes and ascends to the throne room, and He’s there with the Father until 1844, and then He gets up, and He has the second phase of His atonement to go and do in the Most Holy Place, which again, I want to remind everybody was not the presence of God –
Colleen: In Adventism, yeah.
Nikki: In Adventism, yeah. So He has this ongoing work to do. But this right here tells us that at His ascension He sat down at the right hand of God and that He’s waiting from that time, the ascension, until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet. He is not up there walking around doing anything.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: And that “from” and “until,” when I read that and I thought about how the Investigative Judgment interrupts that, I couldn’t help but think about Galatians chapter 3, where that is also ignored, that the law was set in place 400 years after Abraham until the offspring should come. That was Jesus, that’s 3:19, and then in 3:23, that we were imprisoned under the law until the coming faith would be revealed. And then in 24, the law was our tutor until Christ came. They don’t like those markers because they need these things to be eternal, or they need to squeeze the Investigative Judgment in there.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And we see it again in Isaiah chapter 66.
Colleen: Oh, that’s true.
Nikki: Do you want to talk about that one, Colleen?
Colleen: Okay. This is one of Adventism’s proof texts for the Sabbath, “‘And it shall be from new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all mankind will come to bow down before me,’ says the Lord.” Now, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people throw that to me, either by phone calls or by email, and saying, “What do you do with that? What do you do with that?”
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: “We’re going to keep the Sabbath in heaven.” Well, I want to say two things to that. One is, there is one way of looking at this that suggests that this is part of the millennial kingdom, but that is an argument I’m not even going to go into. It’s just an interesting thing to consider. Secondly, though, if we just look at grammar, the prepositions, those markers of time “from” and “to,” “from” and “to” mean something. So let’s look at this. “It shall be from one new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath that all people will come and bow down before me.” Now, if I say to you, Nikki, “I’m going to be gone from Sunday until Saturday,” what would you understand about my being here or not? When would I be gone? How long would I be gone?
Nikki: You would be gone all week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – from Sunday to Saturday.
Colleen: Those prepositions mean what they say. So if it says, “from one new moon to a new moon,” what is that saying in terms of a time frame?
Nikki: That’s saying from month to month. It’s including every day of the month.
Colleen: Every day of the month.
Nikki: This is written to Israel, and so the author is speaking in a way that they’ll understand, marking time in the way they mark time.
Colleen: This is Old Covenant Israel. This prophecy is being given to Old Covenant Israel, who was under the law. And, I just want to point out, the Sabbath law and the marking of Sabbath was given always in relationship to the new moons. Sabbath was figured according to the new moons. Israel had a lunar calendar. So in the second phrase, “fromSabbath to Sabbath,” how many days are included in that?
Nikki: Seven days a week.
Colleen: There is no time in between. So what this is saying is from one new moon to another, from one Sabbath toanother – there is no time that’s not included in that – people will come and bow the knee before the Lord. He’s saying that at some future time to the time that this was written to Israel, there would be a time when everybody would worship the Lord basically every single day because from/to means every day in between. There’s no time left out. When Nikki says these time markers are things that Adventists don’t like, she’s hit the nail on the head because when I started studying the Bible as a Christian, after leaving Adventism, I started realizing that those prepositions changed the meanings if I took them seriously. I couldn’t read the Bible like I used to read the Bible, kind of mulching and morphing and applying big concepts. If I took the words to mean what the words said, those prepositions told me something, and I had to believe them.
Nikki: Isn’t it interesting that a group who is so – who claims to be so aware of time, such as the Sabbath hours, is sodismissive of time markers in Scripture that obliterate their doctrines?
Colleen: That is really an interesting observation. I had not thought of that before. That’s true though. Just by the way, those enemies that are going to be under His feet, it’s interesting that 1 Corinthians 15, the big resurrection chapter that begins with a statement of the gospel, 1 Corinthians 15 says that the last enemy to be put under His feet is death. It’s already defeated, He rose from the grave, but it will not be until He destroys the wicked in the lake of fire that death will be destroyed, because it says in Revelation 20:14, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” So Jesus is reigning, waiting for that last enemy to be put under His feet, and it will happen. But He’s seated. He’s not doing the work of atonement. It’s done. And then we get a reiteration of that in verse 14. What does verse 14 say again?
Nikki: It says, “For” – which indicates why He’s waiting and not working – “For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”
Colleen: Now, you did some extensive research on this, Nikki. Would you talk to us about what you learned about “perfected” and “sanctified”?
Nikki: Yeah. So when I was reading through Hebrews 10, preparing for this podcast, it was as though I saw a halo around verse 14. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] No, she didn’t have a vision. [Laughter.]
Nikki: No, I promise, I did not. I love this verse. So I went online, and I wanted to look a little closer at it, and I found a website called preceptaustin.org, and so a lot of what I saw came from that, and he talks about the fact that we are perfected in a positional sense. So, our sins were put on Christ at the cross, and our sins cannot be in two places at once. So for by a single offering He perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. This perfected, we’ve talked a little bit about this in the podcast before. It has with it the idea of completion. So He has completely secured our position before God for all time. And I’ve heard people say, “What about your future sins?” All of my sins were in the future when Jesus went to the cross, every single one of them. So it’s talking not about a perfect character, which is why it says, “those who are being sanctified,” but it’s talking about our position. And the perfect tense in this verse speaks to the permanence of that perfection, so it’s talking about complete justification and permanent position in Christ. And I love something that I found that Spurgeon had written, and he talks about the fact that we go before God in our station, not in our character. So the website talked about four types of sanctification: pre-conversion, which has with it the set-apart, the called; positional sanctification, which is what this passage is talking about; practical sanctification, which is daily living out in an ongoing way who we are in Christ, what He’s done; and then the perfect sanctification is at our glorification. So this text is talking about our perfected positional sanctification and our daily being sanctified. We can know – if we’re truly born again, if we belong to Christ, we can know that our position in God’s family is eternally secure and that it was eternally secured by the eternal God. There’s nothing that we can do that He hasn’t already paid for.
Colleen: Wow. We’re secure because the eternal God prepared, planned, knew us, sent His eternal Son, who shed His blood of the eternal covenant, who lives forever eternally as our high priest to make intercession for us, and saves forever those who come to Him. This is so amazing.
Nikki: And then the Greek word for “all time” means “unlimited duration of time, with particular focus upon the future, always, forever, forever and ever eternally.”
Colleen: Amen, I want to say. [Laughter.]
Nikki: That’s security! [Laughter.] Yes, amen!
Colleen: Oh! It kind of makes me emotional. It’s hard to talk about this without feeling overwhelmed at what He’s done.
Nikki: I know.
Colleen: And that He’s ushered us into.
Nikki: And then it’s inevitable for me – after I rejoice in that incredible truth, it’s inevitable for me to feel absolute horror at the message of Adventism.
Colleen: I feel the same. It makes me so upset when I think about the people that I’ve known and loved over half my life who are still stuck in it, who are still defending it, who are even angry at what we’re doing and saying about Adventism. They are completely blinded by the god of this age, who has made them see a false caricature of our Lord Jesus.
Nikki: Well, and it takes a significant amount of effort to unfold the heresies that are tucked into Adventism, and so part of my heartache is the fact that there are solid, Bible-believing Christians who give the right hand of fellowship to Adventists, and it’s not because I’m mad at Adventists and I don’t want them to be in the Body of Christ and I’m bitter and resentful. It’s because I want them in the Body of Christ, and if they’re not told that they are not believing unto salvation, that they have been taught and fed a false Jesus and a false gospel and they’re made to feel comfortable there, then my loved ones, my family will never know the freedom of life in Christ and the hope of eternal life.
Colleen: Because Christianity is giving them a pass, and they’ve kind of shut their ears to us. You know, speaking of the twistedness of Adventism, let’s finish those last verses in our little section because these reveal something heinous about Adventist doctrine. Could you read 15-18 again?
Nikki: “And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,’ then He adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.”
Colleen: Okay, Nikki, just looking at those four verses, what do you understand from them? What do you understand about what Jesus has done and about our position in Him?
Nikki: Well, He says that He’s going to put His laws on our hearts and write them in our minds and remember our sins and lawless deeds no more.
Colleen: And that’s not a future, future thing. This is when He makes us alive in Him. This is when He ushers us into the New Covenant. How does He put His laws on our heart, and what laws does He put on our hearts?
Nikki: [Laughter.] The hundred dollar question for former Adventists, huh?
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: Well, He causes us to be born again. Ezekiel talks about Him taking out our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh and causing us – I love that word – causing us to walk in His ways. He’s cleansed our conscience from dead works to be able to serve a living God. He brings us to life, He makes us His own, and then He changes our desires. He gives us the desires of our hearts. I know people often hear that verse and they think that that means He gives us whatever we want, but – and I may be wrong, but the way I’ve experienced my walk with Christ is that the desires of my heart are given to me by God.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Yes. He has changed me and made me want to please Him. It’s different.
Colleen: This is not talking about plastering the Ten Commandments in our consciences, as Adventists teach. This is talking about changing us, giving us a heart, a new heart, giving us His own Spirit. This is what happens when we trust Jesus, and this is how He makes us His. The Jesus that came with a fully submitted will makes us born again so that our wills will love the will of God. This is not about the Ten Commandments. This is not about being able to keep those perfectly. This is about something so much more demanding. This is loving the things of God. Loving God, loving His will, His ways, His eternal truths. This is something that’s so much bigger than the Ten Commandments. It’s insulting to think that it’s the Sabbath that He puts on our hearts. He puts Himself.
Nikki: Yes. The Sabbath the way the Adventists understand it, the “Oh, I’ve got to stop working by sundown on Friday so I have more hours on Friday during the summer, but in the winter I’ve got to end Friday sooner, and then I have to stay in this state of rest until sundown on Saturday,” that’s not put on our heart and put in our mind. But the fulfilment of that shadow I would argue is, because we know, we understand when we’re born again, we have the Holy Spirit witnessing to our spirit that we are children of God, we are secure in our position in God’s family, and that is Sabbath rest. That’s ceasing from your works for salvation, and that is trusting Him with that. The Adventists say that this is the Decalogue. If you’re going to say that, then God has failed at His own covenant because how many years and how much money has the Adventist religion poured into teaching people about the Sabbath? Well, if they understood Friday to Saturday sundown Sabbath, they wouldn’t need to be taught that. They don’t. It wasn’t written on their hearts because that’s not what that means.
Colleen: And then I have to say, this last verse is like the final clincher. “Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.” This is related back to the seated high priest. Jesus is not up in heaven applying His blood, tossing His blood over confessed sins as we think to confess them. Adventism teaches that the atonement continues in heaven. That is heresy. The sacrifice for sin is done. The offering for sin is done. It is applied. When we trust Jesus, we are sanctified, we are perfected, we are forgiven. There’s no ongoing forgiveness as we confess. And I just have to say, Adventists have done a great job of teaching their members that the Catholics are an anti-Christ religion. The irony is that Adventist doctrine is very much like Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine says Jesus’ sacrifice is done, but when they take the mass, it continues the sacrifice. Every week they continue the sacrifice. They apply the benefits of Jesus’ death to them as they take the mass. That is just a minor difference from the Adventist teaching that every time we confess a sin Jesus applies His blood to it. Both of those are causing Jesus to be re-sacrificed over and over, causing His blood to have to be applied or shed or utilized over and over. No. He did a once-for-all sacrifice. It is finished. And when we believe Him, we are born again.
Nikki: And there’s really no pattern in Scripture of this application of God’s blood to each individual sin. When you think about how to interpret Scripture, you look for patterns, and there’s no shadow, there’s no foreshadowing of applying the blood of the sacrificed animal to each individual sin marked in some record somewhere. That’s completely fabricated, completely made up. It’s just not there.
Colleen: We have a perfect high priest, an eternal high priest, a high priest in the order of Melchizedek, not Aaron, a high priest who is God the Son and Son of Man, who has taken all of our imputed sin into Himself, died a perfect death and shed sinless blood on the cross, paid a perfect propitiatory sacrifice for our sin, satisfied the will of God, which included Himself, by the way. This is a plan that was created from before the foundation of the earth. Before there was any sin on earth, this was God’s plan. Jesus didn’t come up with it; the Father didn’t grudgingly decide to go along with it. This was God’s eternal purpose, and when we trust Jesus, we are born again and ushered into His eternal purposes. We’re safe in Him. As we wrap this, I just want to say, we so look forward to seeing our fellow brothers and sisters who shared our common past in Adventism in the kingdom one day, if not before. There’s nothing more exciting than understanding that Scripture unpacks that worldview that we all shared and knowing that the truth is so much greater than we ever imagined, so much more wonderful. As Paul said, beyond anything we can ask or think is the will of God expressed in Christ Jesus and manifested through the church. And if you haven’t trusted Him, we just ask that you consider what He has done and place your faith in Him. So if you want to write to us, write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Go to proclamationmagazine.com and you can sign up for the weekly email. You can follow our podcast on Facebook, on Instagram, and don’t forget to write us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. We thank you so much for sticking with us through this walk through Hebrews, and we look forward to meeting you again next week when we go through the next part of chapter 10.
Nikki: Bye. †
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